The transfer of radionuclides to wildlife
The transfer of radionuclides to wildlife
复制标题
放射性核素向野生动物的转移
DOI:
10.1007/s00411-010-0325-x
复制
发表时间:
2010
影响因子:
1.7
通讯作者:
N. Beresford
中科院分区:
文献类型:
--
作者:
N. Beresford
Over the last decade, a number of approaches have been developed to determine the exposure of, and in some instances risk to, non-human biota (i.e. wildlife) from ionizing radiation (USDOE 2002; Copplestone et al. 2001; Brown et al. 2008). These have been developed in response to national legislation and changes in international recommendations with regard to the need to demonstrate that the environment is protected from radioactive releases (e.g. IAEA 2006; ICRP 2007) rather than relying on previous, anthropocentric approaches. Early in the process of developing these approaches, it was suggested that the parameterization of the variables that describe the transfer of radioactivity between ecosystem components would contribute significantly to the uncertainty in the estimated dose rate (Avila et al. 2004). Recent international evaluations of the available models have shown this to be the case (Vives i Batlle et al. 2007, 2010; Beresford et al. 2008a, 2010a, b; Yankovich et al. 2010a). There are many reasons for this including lack of empirical data for many radionuclide–organism combinations and the theoretical approaches used to derive transfer values when no data exist; use of national data sets; and the conservative nature of some of the parameter values selected to meet the purpose of specific tools (Beresford et al. 2008a, 2010a; Yankovich et al. 2010a). Recognizing the need to improve the model parameterization, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is in the process of producing a handbook of radionuclide transfer parameters for application in environmental assessments similar to that available for human food chain modelling (IAEA 2010). To facilitate this, an online database has been established to collate and summarize data (http:// wiki.ceh.ac.uk/x/-QHbBg); the database will also be used by the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) to help further develop their framework for environmental protection (ICRP 2003, 2008). In 2009, the IAEA supported three workshops to bring together scientists who may be able to contribute to the handbook, with one aim being to stimulate the provision of previously unpublished data. The papers in this issue of Radiation Environmental Biophysics result from presentations made at these workshops. The majority of models developed to assess the exposure of wildlife to ionizing radiation use concentration ratios (CRs) to estimate whole-body activity concentrations and, consequently, absorbed dose rates for internal exposure, where the concentration ratio is defined as: